The Kept Speaker: Fiscal conservatives got rolled by the Governor, but Jim Tucker did just fine

When Governor Bobby Jindal swooped into Baton Rouge last Friday to back the Senate version of the state's two budgets (the current fiscal year and the upcoming fiscal year), House Speaker Jim Tucker bemoaned the fact that the Governor had backed two budgets that did not reflect the values of fiscal conservatives.

It's a view Tucker has repeated on a number of occasions since the session ended. It was a frustrating end to the session for Tucker, who spent most of his time frustrating friends and foes alike. The trouble started with his ham-handed handling of the election of Joel Robideaux of Lafayette to the position of Speaker Pro Tempe. Tucker dished out some tough love to people who he said had broken commitments made to him on the vote. A tinge of bitterness stayed in the air for the rest of the session.

But, fate stepped in during April when Governor Bobby Jindal decided to relocated to Plaquemines Parish to lead the state's response to the BP Gulf Gusher. That cat being away gave Tucker room to play and, man, did he have a run.

Tucker took control of the budget process. He doggedly pursued the long-cherished dream of Louisiana conservatives of closing large swaths if not all of the LSU Hospital system (formerly the Charity Hospital System. He chased his plan to consolidate all of the higher education boards in the state only to find that his handling of the Robideaux election and aftermath would deny him success on this score.

He was steadfast in his position on how the state could borrow from and repay money from the so-called Rainy Day Fund. He refused to recognize the final estimate of the state's economists on the size of the hole in the current year budget, thereby setting the stage for a climactic showdown with the Senate and his nemesis Senate President Joel Chaisson II.

All the while, Tucker and his favorite Democratic Representative Jim Fannin went to the four-corners offense on the budget, holding onto to it as long as they possibly could. When the House approved HB-1 with just two weeks left in the session, the bill reflected Tucker's vision of the future of state government.

It pretty much scared the hell out of everyone in the Senate and anyone with a conscience. At a time when the state is giving more than $7 billion in tax breaks to businesses and the well-heeled, Tucker's budget would have shut down four or more LSU Hospitals, forced the closure of several state college campuses, and made yet another round of deep cuts in Medicaid. Total state layoffs including the hospital closings, the campus closings and the other reductions in state payrolls could have reached 10,000. That number does not even address the loss in healthcare jobs in the private sector resulting from the Medicaid cuts.

At a time when Jindal and his allies were running around the state and in federal courtrooms predicting economic Armageddon over the temporary loss of about 3,000 to 5,000 deep water drilling and support jobs, hurling that number of state workers out of their jobs at the same time created something of an appearance issue that even the Governor could not ignore.

Tucker was unfazed. Maybe he knew the drilling job numbers were a sham or maybe he just does not care about the impact of massive job losses on the state economy; either way, Tucker pushed on.

Then Jindal flew in and took away all of Tucker's fun. The Speaker ended up voting against the budget, as did group of other House members. In the end, Tucker found out that Speakers only have power so long as the Governor lets them have it, or if the Governor is preoccupied with other matters.

It is testimony to just how draconian Tucker's budget was that eliminating 3,000 state jobs, cutting $25 million from Medicaid reimbursements, $25 million in cuts for higher education, and guts funding for the arts was considered something of a victory.

Whatever relief might exist could well be short-lived if state revenues continue their downward trend, wrecking the assumptions on which the budget was built. But, if needed, those cuts will be made by the Jindal administration.

On the Sunday, the second-to-last day of the session, Tucker got some help cushioning the blow of his Wiley Coyote-like defeat on the budget. He won legislative approval to have the swank apartment in the Pentagon Barracks that had previously been the realm of the Lieutenant Governor designated as the quarters of the Speaker of the House.

That apartment had been extensively remodeled by Mitch Landrieu when he was Lieutenant Governor. Landrieu spent about $1 million in taxpayer money on the renovation and that drew howls from fiscal conservatives.

So, to the Speaker go those spoils. For Tucker, now a man with a considerable list of foes in the Capitol and the House, the challenge will be to keep that job title that brings the perk heading into the final year of his term.

The perk is his — if he can remain Speaker.

The Jindal Way: ‘Every Man an Hourly Employee’

In Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana, more people work as cashiers, retail salespeople and laborers than in any other categories of workers. If Jindal had his way, the state’s future will look a lot more like that than, say, the technology and new industry future envisioned by Mike Foster’s “Vision 20/20” (PDF) economic development strategy. (Foster’s strategy was based on an accurate the assessment of Louisiana’s potential, but came too late in his administration to have had a chance to prove itself.)

In Jindal’s personal assessment of Louisiana (informed no doubt by the comments of those many Louisiana businessmen who have handed him campaign checks), our problem is that higher education is not turning out enough skilled workers to satisfy the needs of Louisiana businesses. It’s an odd line of thinking to be held by a Rhodes Scholar biology graduate from Brown University whose adult life has been spent almost entirely as an employee of either the state or federal government.

For some in the state’s business community, converting higher education to a vo-tech program with football teams is a long-held dream.

That perspective gives Jindal the policy justification and political cover for his work of throttling higher education at four-year colleges while proposing that the state’s nascent community college system take up some of the slack — except that he’s cutting them, too. If education was all that four-year institutions did, Jindal’s approach might be more palatable. But, as studies of the economic impact of the University of Louisiana System statewide and LSU’s main campus in Baton Rouge have shown, higher education is big business in Louisiana with a big economic impact on the state as a whole, but especially on the communities where those campuses are located.

University-based research and technology transfer initiatives have been the base upon which strong regional economies have been built in various parts of the country, notably the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, Silicon Valley in California, and in the Austin, Texas, area. Under governors Mike Foster and Kathleen Blanco, Louisiana finally got serious about pursuing those development models, committing state dollars to build university research capacity and encouraging the development of university infrastructure to attract researchers, research dollars and private sector support.

These are long-term strategies that require patience and persistence, things that do not come naturally to Jindal. The current fiscal crisis and the national campaign cycle have combined to arrest Jindal’s development of these traits.

It took “the intervention at the Mansion” of four of Jindal’s predecessors last year to keep him from inflicting a $220 million cut on higher education. He pared it down to half of that. Now, with the crisis worsening, Dave Treen is dead, Buddy Roemer has gone all Tea Party on us, leaving only Mike Foster as someone Jindal might heed from among last year’s team. Governor Blanco would offer him sound advice, but as Jindal’s governorship is based on being the anti-Blanco the likelihood of him taking it is almost as remote as his chance of being the Republican nominee for President in 2012.

That higher education is going to get whacked was made certain with the appearance of the newest hole in the state’s budget. Faced with what he knew to be a large budget shortfall but mindful of the damage a responsible call for tax increases would do to his national political standing among conservatives, Jindal’s executive budget for the next fiscal year abandons his previous ironclad rule against using one-time spending to shore up the state budget. He wants to grab money from the Tax Amnesty Program and raid various trust funds to avoid more cuts that are already unpopular with voters.

The problem now for Jindal is that he so effectively sold his previous stance that his former allies like the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and fiscally conservative groups like the Public Affairs Research Council have lined up to oppose him. Even some of his erstwhile allies in the Legislature are aghast at the change of direction.

With the hole in the current fiscal year budget, some of that one-time money might have to be carried back into this year in an effort to avoid late year budget cuts that will force months-long employee furloughs (that is, months without pay!) at campuses across the state, the cancellation of summer school classes, and the halt of construction projects.

Furloughs will have a devastating impact on the families of those working in higher education, ranging everywhere from the administrative level down to janitorial services. People not paid means money taken out of circulation in communities. If bringing jobs to a community has a multiplier effect, taking money out of a community has a negative impact — (a denominator effect?) —that must nearly match that.

The cuts in higher education being contemplated in the last quarter of this state fiscal year (now until June 30) could — by themselves — precipitate what will be known as the Jindal Recession. He will own it because his policies will have caused it.

But, higher education isn’t the biggest sector that Jindal’s policies are wrecking.

That would be healthcare.

The 'Jindal Knows Healthcare' Myth
Saying that Bobby Jindal understands healthcare is like saying used car salesmen understand automobile design and manufacturing.

Jindal earned his chops as Mike Foster’s first secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals. He earned it by cutting spending in the department, particularly Medicaid spending. His ‘success’ there was so brutal that it cost him the 2003 governor’s race.

Jindal has never understood that behind every government budget dollar there are people dependent on the service that dollar delivers. Nowhere is that more true than in the Medicaid program. Medicaid is a safety net program. It exists to provide access to care for those in our society who cannot otherwise get it, particularly the young, those with chronic disease, and the disabled.

That Jindal made his name by cutting cost in Medicaid is to say that Jindal worked to deny access to services and to care. Yes, he eliminated fraud in the medical transportation program, but the bulk of the savings he found came through a redefining of what services were available and who would be eligible for them. To Jindal, these were just budget numbers. To the people who had them, these were services taken away.

Jindal’s approach has not changed after stints with the Bush administration and in the Congress. He brought in Alan Levine from Florida to manage DHH. Levine came to Jindal’s attention after implementing a managed care pilot project in Florida’s Medicaid program. Levine tried to get the Bush administration to sign off on a similar plan in the final days of that administration, but the plan arrived too late to get approval.

The managed care approach to Medicaid combines Jindal’s indifference to human need with a Bush-era style of crony capitalism. The idea is to reduce the state’s Medicaid spending by bringing in a private sector administrator to run the program that would set limits on the types and frequency of care available to Medicaid patients.

That is, the plan proposes to save money by adding another layer of bureaucracy — a private sector hand in the till — Medicaid spending will somehow magically go down. Think about that for a second. That program manager will be expected to take over administration of the program and save the state money in the process.

The only way that can possibly work is by denying services to those dependent upon the program.

But, as former DHH secretary and current head of LSU Hospitals Dr. Fred Cerise revealed recently, privatization of Medicaid service delivery in the Baton Rouge area is going to drive up the cost of delivery of those services.

This is crony capitalism because the real winners in privatization schemes like this are not the consumers of those services or the taxpayers; the real winners are the companies that win those lucrative contracts. If this sounds familiar, then you were either a victim of the Bush/Cheney era approach to FEMA or read the stories about American reconstruction scandals in Iraq.

All of this is obvious to those now fighting Jindal’s attempt to privatize the homes for the disabled across the state. In a recent legislative hearing on the budget, a parent of a disabled child who is a resident at Pinecrest Supports and Services Center near Pineville plaintively told lawmakers, "I have not heard anything about a better level of care for our family.”

No, because the level of care does not figure into the Jindal Way. It’s not a number. In Jindal’s world, numbers are real; people are not — at least not those who might actually need government services.

Hundreds of state workers who deliver the services at centers like Pinecrest and other state facilities will lose their jobs, undermining the economies of the communities where they reside.

The state’s portion mental health services program will be all but eliminated under Jindal’s proposed budget. The state wants to discharge 118 patients from state-run psychiatric hospitals and place them in privately run group homes. Another 138 beds in state-run facilities would be privatized.

Again, privatization is being pushed as a solution to the state’s budget crisis but privatization has not been shown to be a money-saver nor has it been demonstrated that the quality of care will not be affected by the changes.

Next Year, We Take Down 'Charity'

Jindal is committed to taking this a step further in their next budget when he wants to develop and implement a plan to shut down much if not all of the LSU Hospital system (formerly known at the Charity Hospital System).

This has been the long-cherished dream of conservatives and it will be presented as a budget necessity. But, it is nothing but a naked ideologically driven move designed to prop up Jindal’s conservative credentials. The closure of these hospitals has been Jindal’s goal all along. Jindal is now citing the impact of the Affordable Care Act as the justification for the move he craves to make. Jindal says the problem is that the Affordable Care Act will do away with the Disproportionate Share Program of compensating hospitals for providing care to the uninsured.

True enough, but the Affordable Care Act will bring coverage to 800,000 Louisiana adults (PDF)who do not now have coverage so that there will be fewer people without insurance coverage or the ability to pay for care.

In fact, the Affordable Care Act will bring $17 billion in new healthcare funding annually into Louisiana through a combination of tax credits to businesses, subsidies to individuals, and expansion of the Medicaid program. If anything, Louisiana will need more medical capacity, not less.

Typical of an ideologue, Jindal is committed to a course of action and he’s not going to let the facts stand in his way.

When the Revenue Estimating Conference makes their official end of the fiscal year deficit estimate next Wednesday, all of Louisiana will get a much clearer picture of just how far down Jindal is willing to push this state in order to attempt to continue his political climb.

Get ready to feel pretty low on the totem pole, Louisiana.